The storyline is simple; an eleven- year- old boy hits another. But the dynamic of the two sets of parents, who try to hold a cordial meeting to discuss the event, becomes wildly chaotic. Keen to empathise as much as possible with the situation these parents are faced with, I invited my neighbour and friend to join me – as her son is in my son’s class.
read my review on Culture Compass: http://www.culturecompass.co.uk/2012/02/16/carnage-review/
Filed under film
If I ever needed any proof of the love my mother has for my father, this is it.
Each January she makes a year’s supply of more than 30 jars of homemade marmalade for him (and a few very special others) to enjoy at breakfast time. Finding this a pretty impressive task, I persuaded her to put down her preserving pan for long enough to talk to me about this labour of love. I wondered if the time of year, type of oranges and recipe she follows are all crucial to producing her quintessentially British golden jelly.
Going back around 100 years, my maternal great grandmother made all of her own preserves and although my mother had inherited her aluminium utensils, she recognised them not to be as safe as John Lewis’ stainless steel. The 1.5kg ofSevilleoranges required to make 10-12 jars can only be purchased at the end of January. So incredibly bitter are these specific oranges that they can only be eaten in this form and crucially important are their pips as when boiled up, they ‘help to get a good set’. Our expert tells me that the trickiest part of the whole process is the cutting the pith away from the rind and it is only at this point that perhaps Radio 4 is turned down for ultimate concentration.
The recipe my marmalade maestro of a mother follows is in the ultra reliable but now out-of-print Katie Stewart’s The Times Cookbook http://amzn.to/wUSzrG . She suggests adding a small amount of crushed coriander seeds in muslin to be boiled up in the mix. I can vouch that this does give the marmalade an extra depth of taste.
So while we all get as sticky as Paddington Bear, I’ll be raising my warm toast to she who peeled, stirred, boiled and squeezed to produce the jar of bright shining happiness.
Filed under food
Curly and her sous-chef did themselves proud last night delighting an intimate crowd of old friends with a spread of middle-eastern/modern European dishes while simultaneous unveiling their new fabulously sleek open-plan kitchen to Him and me. However, all those present will agree that the desert kicked off the real excitement as we reminisced the era when Space Dust rocked our worlds.
For those who were not allowed (or perhaps were not of pocket money age in the late 70s), the fascination with Space Dust was that it sizzled and popped on your tongue, causing a rather thrilling tingling sensation. The manufacturers took this extraordinary ‘carbonated candy’ off the market after a child was rumoured to have exploded having consumed an excessive amount followed by a can of well-known cola. The myth was confirmed as urban legend but the unusual bag of crackle remained banished.
Enter Curly and her desert: Heston Blumenthal’s Chocolate Popping-Candy Cake and the jar of left-over sparkles for the table of 40-somethings to indulge in. The overwhelming verdict last night was to bring back the original Space Dust, the king of all retro sweets, but just to monitor our intake.
There has been a great deal of build up to my visit to Riding House Café. Email correspondence between the PRs and I has even been fraught due to miscommunication (as is often the case with techy-chat) and then, last Saturday night, everyone’s plans were scuppered by the cold fluffy stuff. Finally, today, I took long awaited elevenses with my writer friend, at the modern all-day brasserie tucked away behind Oxford Street.
I have always found elevenses to be a much under-rated mini meal. Eating breakfast at 7am leaves a serious five or six hours before lunch and I often need a little something to bridge the gap. The writer friend and I both work at home and so were craving a reason to take a break from fluffy slippers, big jumpers and our laptops.
http://www.culturecompass.co.uk/2012/02/09/the-riding-house-cafe-review/
Filed under food
